Sharks With Lasers On Their Heads!!

[Marco]

(Not counting the gaming group time that we all went to dinner as our Shadowrun characters...)


Have Fun,
- Steve Eley

OOOooooo ... guts. I like that!
-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

If we're talking about what gamers at large play, we're looking at the games that move thousands rather than dozens of copies.

Well, actually I thought that we were talking about the games available to a player like John or Jack. I'm sure that they can find all of the games mentioned if they look hard enough.

If you're saying that the mass of gamers out there doesn't want non-Landsharked games, I'm right with you. But that's never stopped us here from making a new game to cover a niche demand. The only real question is whether the niche making the demand will really play such games. They seem to be earnest about it.

Mike

[contracycle]

Twilight 2000 arguably, Recon, possibly Top Secret, Milleniums End.  It is true however that none of these are runaway commercial successes.

I've run perfectly mundane western games, some Intel/Counter-Terrorism, a little bit of Vietnam stuff, and a Miami Vice game for quite significant periods and they worked fine.  Probably mundane gaming constitutes 50% of things I've run.

The mundane games that can work conceptually are those that revolve around the kind of conflict resolution RPG provides by default, i.e. interpersonal violence.  I too think there is a gaping hole were the procedurals should be, partly because the experience of those mundane games made me aware of how little I knew about, say, police procedures in all sorts of little ways.  The problem that GURPS-like games encounter seems to be that they essentially hand-wave this stuff away; it is not that they are not discussed, it is rather that they are not mechanically incarnated and hence there are no strutural rewards for even bothering with them.

Secondly the RW context of most hitherto achievable mundane games, such as the military, impose severe restrictions on character action and/or require a cast of thousands that is pain to track but threatens plausibility if you don't.  The very mundanity bites you in the butt, and there is no mechanical support for that sort of situation.  This problem faces linear fiction too, and it incorporates some laser-sharkiness conceit frequently.  Frex, the fact that in Miami Vice the main characters are under cover as drug dealers and hence get to live an extravagent lifestyle.

I find it striking that even the heavily combat oriented systems we have today would be mostly useless even for describing even trauma injuries suitable for ER, becuase the process of bodily healing and the technicalities of injury are abstracted.  Most games don't even distinguish between first aid and surgery as distinct processes, most don't have realistic healing times, most don't tell you whats really wrong or present you with any meaningful problems to discuss and think about.  None discuss non-trauma conditions in any depth at all.

Hence it seems to me the problem is primarily technical.  I think it should be possible to "systemitise" the procedures in the procedurals, at least sufficiently for dramatic action.  What they would have to do, however, is procide sufficient detail that the players do not need themselves to become subject matter expects, that puts the barrier to entry too high.  They have to themselves provide the details as to, say, cancer of the pancreas, and what it means and how it can be addressed, and locate this in structural context that provides reason for action.  This is a tall order both becuase the writer needs at least access to subject matter expertise, and partly because the mechanisms that would structure the game do not yet exist IMO.

This, it seems to me, would be the purpse of exploring game systems in their own right and without context, becuase I think we need to break out of a model in whioch each resolution is discrete, as in most contemporary systems, and instead look to a mechanical model that is itself procedural - that, I guess, goes through stages and requires different tupes of tasks in sequence.  That at any rate is how I think it will eventually be done - the extension of our resolution from ones that give discrete results but instead serves as stepes in a sequence.

[John Kim]

ER: Not just doctors but doctors with drug habits/brain turmors/parkinsons
Ally McBeal: Not just lawyers but lawyers with functional schizophrenia
West Wing: not just US presidential politics but a president with MS

(I'm ignoring the complete lasersharkiness of, frex, 24)

OK, I don't watch any of these shows, but this seems incredibly exaggerated to me.  A lawyer with functional schizophrenia seem pretty different to me than superpowers and magic.  Now, obviously there is a range of over-the-top-ness: some shows might be a little exaggerated, while others are totally over-the-top.  The point is, though, that RPGs are almost all clustered on the laser-shark end of the spectrum.  Even if you consider E.R. to be a little bit laser-sharky, wouldn't you agree that it is far less laser-sharky than most RPGs?  

When I refer to non-laser-sharky, I am comparing to the traditional RPGs.  In my mind, these are characters like like Sherlock Holmes, the Three Musketeers, Magnum P.I., and so forth.  For example, I would love to see a heist caper RPG.  It seems to me

Here's a challenge (and I'm gonna allow entries from any US show in the last twenty years):

Name a single successful (meaning popular not critically acclaimed) lasershark-free TV program that didn't have insanely good writing and acting, far beyond what an average gaming group could achieve.  

I'm not sure what the point of this is.  I mean, I would think that any popular TV show will have better writing and acting than the average gaming group.  Your implication is that laser-sharky shows (like, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) get by with poor writing and acting.  OK, now admittedly I know very little about what is popular on TV, but is this really true?  I certainly think that Buffy has writing and acting just as good as other TV shows I like such as Law & Order or The Sopranos.  

In any case, RPGs don't have to have mainstream popularity to be successful (thank goodness).  Indy games like Sorcerer, say, can be reasonably considered successful, I think.  I'm not saying that the whole RPG market can or should change.  I just think it would be nice if there were a few more viable choices which are low on laser-sharkiness.

[pete_darby]

I think this is going to turn out one of those "impossible till someone does it" propositions... I didn't think I could run with a healer /medic based campaign till I saw that RPGnet thread.

I'm talking myself into writing Lawyer Quest, aren't I? Or writing Dogme 2003: the rpg...

Bugger

Maybe I'm missing something: aren't Soap and Nicotine Girls two non-sharky games? What about Alma-mater?

-Marco

Soap , afaics, pretty much falls into the category of comedy games... if you could point me at a game which took Soaps more seriously, then I'd be fine with that. I think Laser Sharks could easily slip into Soap (aline abductions, re-runs of the V;tM series...) wihtout violating either the letter or the spirit of the game.

It's not replicating a mundane drama, it's mocking it. I know, I never said it had to take it seriously, but still, I'm not interested in it as a model for what I'm after.

Nicotine Girls... is the anti-LaserShark.

[pete_darby]

I'm not sure if that's true, certainly the big US shows that do well over here in the UK (all I have to judge American TV by) have elements of lasersharkyness.

ER: Not just doctors but doctors with drug habits/brain turmors/parkinsons
Ally McBeal: Not just lawyers but lawyers with functional schizophrenia
West Wing: not just US presidential politics but a president with MS

(I'm ignoring the complete lasersharkiness of, frex, 24)

The shows that I can think that are fairly pure - say Homicide, Life on the Street  - have an insanely good quality of writing and acting.  You're just not going to get that quality around a gaming table.

Here's a challenge (and I'm gonna allow entries from any US show in the last twenty years):

Name a single successful (meaning popular not critically acclaimed) lasershark-free TV program that didn't have insanely good writing and acting, far beyond what an average gaming group could achieve.

At its best, gaming offers cheap poetry - and the magnets for cheap poetry are the magnets for cheap poetry, lasersharks and all.

I'm really looking for a roll eyes icon here... people with problems are laser sharks?

Homicide: not just cops, but cops played by ex- stand up comics!

I think you're starting to equate laser sharks with plot developments.

To me, the essential quality of a laser shark is that it ups the power of either the protagonist or the antagonist; all these examples were problems for the protagonists.

HWat I'm looking for, I think, at the moment, is games like Nicotine Girls, Dust Devils, those bits for a medic campaign, that actively enofrce the dramatic conventions of their source, rather than break them with sensationalism.

And again, one mans tragic plot twist (a president with MS) is anothers laser shark, but there you go.

If the West Wing had a President with psychic powers, that would be a laser shark. If ER had a doctor who had powers of faith healing, that woudl be a laser shark. If Ally McBeal's fantasies were shown to be leaking into reality, that would be a laser shark.

I think part of the appeal for me of Smallville is that it's Superman with the laser sharks stripped down.

And of course, damn good writing and acting.

And as for your challenge... well, you've pretty much defined Laser Sharks as virtually any dramatic device available, so it's kind of hard.

[pete_darby]

But, holy cats, if someone can make a playable Law & Order RPG, they're going to be rich.

Mike

Rich.... from a big license RPG?

Sorry, you've lost me there.

[Bruce Baugh]

I'm less interested in power as such than I am in the ability to explore out consequences of choices - including what choices are constrained by forces within the character but outside the scope of rational consciousness - which means that I find a fair amount in common between, say, Pendragon and Wraith. I suspect that this is part of why the generic games aren't setting the world on fire when it comes to playing focused dramatic genres like crime and medicine despite the existence of excellent resources like GURPS Cops, even though few players would articulate the difference this way. The generic games offer little support or structure for the interior life which is the lynchpin of that kind of drama. A sort of "universal passion-driven system" would suit me great, and is what I'd build on/toward for this kind of project.

[pete_darby]

hmmm... spawning a new thread on mundane RPG ideas.

Laser Sharking as a term sucks, don't it?

How about Uppers?

[Marco]

Ally McBeal ranged from the semi-plausable to theater of the absurd. I know. I had a Tivo and an Ally fan in the house. I saw plenty of it. And believe me: Ally had a laser on her forehead.

Dunno about ER.

I think "Law and Order the RPG" would likely only be vaguely recognizeable as an RPG (I don't watch the show so that's based on other court-dramas I've seen). I have yet to see a case that a resolution system like we see in traditional RPG's could be satisfying for court-room drama outside of being a high-level of abstraction strategic game (which is counter to what's usually enjoyable in a court room drama, IME).

I think Laser Sharking is a good term tho. It captures the over-the-top nature of the charge. It just needs a boundary that's fairly firm.

-Marco

[John Kim]

I think that's a good point. Generic systems work just fine for most "mundane" games. That is, they won't do anything special for you in terms of exploring anything in particular, but they'll be there as a backdrop for play.

And there's always Freeform.

I don't agree with this.  Consider some analogies with more common rules.  For example, vehicles and martial arts are both purely mundane -- but they tend to involve significant new rules when a game focuses on them.  I think there is a reason for that.  You can try to run a martial arts game just by using a standard system and just adding in the martial arts description as color.  i.e. A martial arts game using just the GURPS Basic Set.  However, I would say that it doesn't work so well.  

I would say the same thing is even more true of most mundane dramas.  The basic GURPS rules have at least closer to handling martial arts than they are at, say, police procedural or medical conflicts.

[Marco]

Well, there's GURPS Martial Arts and GURPS Cops. I haven't read GURPS Cops--but I bet it does a pretty good job of discussing the procedure. It might even talk about the genre.

A universal system's extension, I'd think, is quite legitimate for handling that stuff. GURPS Russia would be a handy thing to have for a Cherry Orchard game, no?

-Marco

[M. J. Young]

(I'm assuming for purposes of this post that nobody here actually wants to assert that tedium and routine are superior to exciting action. If so, I laugh at you. I'm proceeding on the view that a bunch of us like drama and action and intrigue and comedy and romance about relatively real people in gaming and would like to make it work. The question for me then becomes, why doesn't this desire translate into cool games nearly so readily as others seem to? So that's my agenda.)

I'm thinking about my Multiverser players.

You see, in Multiverser, everyone starts as an ordinary person with ordinary abilities thrust into an extraordinary situation.

What intrigues me at this moment is that some of those ordinary people begin to exploit the game's offering of extraordinary abilities--find someone to teach you magic, learn to use a kinetic blaster, become the greatest swordsman in this world, discover how to use your mental powers, stuff like that--and some remain ordinary people, doing what they know and maybe improving a bit over time.

My impression is that for a lot of us who game, there is this fantasy about being more than we are, and that's at least one of the things that at some level attracts us to gaming. I'll admit that I'm one of those who attempts to build up impressive abilities in my Multiverser characters when I play. Part of that is certainly that the referees who run the games in which I play tend to throw challenges at me, so I make every effort to rise to them--but part of it is that I like to imagine myself more capable than I am. Players who are truly comfortable with who they are and what they can do, who don't feel a need to make the world a better place or save every poor soul they encounter, tend to stick to being who they are.

Now, I don't know whether this means that most people are less than fully satisfied with who they are and like to fantasize about being something more powerful, or whether it means that gamers are a self-selected group in which there is a higher concentration of people for whom that is true, but I think either way it may explain why we like to up the levels in our games.

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

Here's a challenge (and I'm gonna allow entries from any US show in the last twenty years):

Name a single successful (meaning popular not critically acclaimed) lasershark-free TV program that didn't have insanely good writing and acting, far beyond what an average gaming group could achieve.  

O.K., I'll make a stab at this. Forgive me if some of these are outside the twenty-year mark, as I don't watch that much television and am really terrible at dating events.

Magnum P.I. was a fairly long running show, so it must have been successful. Probably the guy who played Higgins was the best actor, and he was terribly limited in what he could do on the show. Selleck isn't really a bad actor, but particularly at the beginning I think he was there more for the hunk factor than anything else. The writing was very stock in trade detective stuff, no surprises there. Maybe it's older than twenty years, but otherwise I think it qualifies.

I'd like to say Babewatch--er, Baywatch. I know that David Hasselhoff is very popular in Europe, but I don't know that they think he's a great actor. I remember some comedian say that this show is the one that has more people who "just happen to be clicking through it" than any other--no one would admit they watched it, but everyone had seen enough of it to know something about it. I'll admit that I watched maybe three or four episodes, sporadically. I seem to recall that it was in syndication at a time when there was nothing else on my television, so I tried it a few times. Scantily clad bodies in motion was, I am sure, the selling point. I remember Jackie Chan once saying that in his early martial arts films, the scripts existed solely to tie the fight scenes together. That's Baywatch: the scripts were an excuse to put a lot of swimsuit models on the screen and give them something to hack through that resembled a story so that people could pretend they weren't there for the view. It was certainly successful, and nothing unusual happened that I ever saw or heard. My hesitation is solely because I didn't watch more than a few episodes, so I can't say whether any of the lead characters were ever abducted by aliens or warped to a strange parallel universe where David Hasselhoff was a really good actor or anything like that.

Diagnosis Murder is recent enough. I know Dick Van Dyke is a great actor, but the writing was all hack work, really (I remember seeing the same plots almost exactly in other detective shows) and he's much better at comedy than drama, which of course the show mostly avoided. It stayed on network for several seasons, and is still on cable in reruns, so that sounds like it's successful. Father is chief of staff at a hospital, son is a police detective, everything seems pretty ordinary to me. No laser sharks.

I'd like to name Matlock. Now, maybe it's because it was a lawyer show and I'd just finished law school and kept wanting to jump up and shout, Objection, your honor whenever he did anything, and maybe it was because my mother was an inveterate fan of Perry Mason so I really thought courtroom drama could be better done, but I rarely felt the writing or acting was anything to write home about. Bringing Don Knotts on board really weakened it drastically. I liked a couple of the supporting actors, but in the main everything hung on Griffith. I've seen him act well, but not particularly in that series. That also had a long run and is still on cable.

Some of the others that come to mind were really erratic. That is, Angela Landsbury was very good in Murder, She Wrote, and often had good supporting cast and good scripts, but sometimes the guest stars were overrated names that did very poorly so the episodes are sometimes pretty bad but other times very good. I'm afraid that I tended to gravitate toward shows that either did have good writers and good actors (Seventh Heaven) or were laser sharky (Love and Curses, Seaquest) or both (Buffy, Angel). So I don't really know what's out there now. But four successful laser-shark-free mediocre shows should demonstrate that they are out there.

--M. J. Young

[Bruce Baugh]

Darned useful post, M.J. I was, like others, mostly thinking in terms of excellent source material, and it's good to be be reminded of mediocre options. I don't mean that in any sneering way, either - I genuinely think that second-rate inspirations often lead to great gaming, and it's not necessary for a game to match the utter heights to be satisfying at capturing a style of experience.